Government Relations

About Primer

Fixing our K-12 education system is a civilizationally-important problem. We believe that all of our problems — including the ones that dominate the headlines — are downstream of education.

We have a simple thesis on how to solve it: empower 1,000’s of educators to launch microschools in their communities.

We believe the historical tradeoff between price (tuition) and quality is a false dichotomy.

PrimerOS automates and eliminates much of the costs of traditional schools. Microschools have a structural advantage — asset-light real estate — which means much lower capex and opex. You put it together, and you get something that’s never existed before: a world-class education that’s accessible to normal American families and can rapidly scale.

What You’ll Do

We’re bringing on our first Government Relations hire at Primer. This role is simple but hard: be the face of Primer to local and state governments and deliver winning outcomes for the company.

We have a strong foundation to build on: we’ve changed state law in Florida (twice), closed partnerships (to be announced soon) with other states, and have close relationships with key folks across state and local governments in our markets. It’s time for us to formalize and consolidate these efforts a bit, and that’s where you come in. 

This role is equal parts proactive work (passing new legislation, pushing for administrative changes at the state / local level, etc.) and reactive work (firefighting when things go sideways at a given campus). If we do our job on the proactive front, the reactive work should taper off over time – though it will never go away (so you need to love a good fire drill!).

You’ll be responsible for managing our various state and local lobbying teams, working with our CEO to set our overall regulatory strategy and consistently finding creative ways to help us grow more quickly. This is explicitly not a wining and dining role – to thrive you’ll need to be operational and ready to roll up your sleeves to deliver real wins for Primer.

If you outsource your thinking or conviction to experts, you will explicitly not be a good fit for this role. Lobbyists and advocacy groups are, in general, wildly ineffective and often incentivized to prolong the path to change – not accelerate it. We aim to move more quickly than others thought possible, find paths that no one has uncovered, and aggressively pave the way for the new US K-12 education system that our kids deserve.

Responsibilities

• Own regulatory operations across the Primer network, including relationships and approvals with local & state governments.

• Collaborate and execute on our regulatory strategy (both state and local) in all of our markets.

• Be the first-call for team members when we need to solve a local regulatory problem quickly. 

• Manage our lobbyists towards strong outcomes for Primer – this will require uncomfortable conversations, pushing them more than most clients would, and being willing to hold them to specific milestones.

Preferred Qualifications

• Past government relations (or adjacent) work in FL, AL, TX, GA, TN, AZ, ID, IA, NC, SC, MS, LA, and UT.

• Experience managing lobbyists (both state and local) towards real business outcomes. 

• Work experience within a fast-growing startup is a plus.

If this sounds like you, fill out the application below with a bit about yourself and we’ll take it from there! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email us at [email protected].